I wish I had a bus ticket for every time I heard someone say this. Unless you’re Manhattan or San Francisco, it is fair to say you don’t have a parking problem. I take that back. You do have a parking problem – there’s too much of it.

Here is a quick how-to guide on dealing with those who claim your city or town lacks adequate parking.

1. Understand Perception

The easiest and most time-effective way of convincing your opposition is to have them acknowledge that the perception of parking availability is different than the reality. People come to the conclusion of parking scarcity for a good reason; many live elsewhere and only visit the city during peak periods or special events.

Do you ever dream that the vacant lot down the street will be transformed into a dog park? What about an outdoor performance venue?

Stop dreaming. Make it happen.

Lots to Love is a Pittsburgh-based organization that provides step-by-step instructions for those of you looking to transform the vacant lots in your communities.

Engage your community throughout the process. It’s important that your community helps determine and is on board with the design idea. If they’re engaged, neighbors will be a great source of volunteers.

Determine the design (e.g. tool library, community garden, etc.). Take into consideration your community’s goals, capacity to complete hands-on work to transform the lot, and the funding your community will need to implement a specific design.

Identify a lot that’s suitable for the design selected. For example, if you’re looking to grow food, you’ll need to select a lot that has access to water, sunshine, and quality soil.

The two community organizers spent months in weekly “open to all” community meetings, speaking with residents from North Central West Virginia.

Among the many ideas and issues being shared, they noticed one consistent theme. Residents, business owners, and event organizers felt it was a challenge to reach their audience while the audience expressed they were having a difficulty finding them.

Amanda says word of mouth was how they got their insider tips on good things to do, and places to stay.

“Now we rely on local and state news sites, Facebook, and much more” she says. “By the time we piece together all the events happening around our state and local communities it’s usually after the events have taken place.”

And so these two ambitious young locals launched Experience West Virginia, an online platform that aims to connect and engage residents and state visitors with fun local & statewide events, community meetings and special business offerings.

The statewide community calendar focuses on big and small events in each region. If you have an event, special promotion or non-profit meeting, you can post it there.

“There is no lack of creative business owners in our state,” Brittany says. “However, there is a lack of consistent, easy-to-use centralized communication that promotes the efforts of these individuals and what they have to offer on a local scale.”

A town where… when you bring up a new idea, other people hit you with negativity and stubborn pessimism.

Other people seem to only see the negatives in the town.

People tell you “we tried that already,” and “that’s not how we do things here.”

People tell you “we tried that already,” and “that’s not how we do things here.” People ask, “why should we listen to you? Your last idea didn’t work.”

This has happened to you so often that you start to play it out in your head. Hearing the negative voices in your mind, you hesitate to bring up ideas any more.

Or, an idea-friendly town where… when you bring up a new idea, other people’s attitudes are generally positive.

You can feel this even before you bring up an idea because your town shows its attitude with awards for ideas, public recognition of experiments, and plans that allow for new projects and ideas to come up.

You’re not alone, because connections throughout the community mean lots of people bring up ideas, and connect with each other to work on them.

You can try a small-scale version of your idea in an innovative environment.

You can try a small-scale version of your idea in an innovative environment with small-scale stores, co-working spaces and pop-up opportunities. Lots of experiments are always going on, and both successes and failures are expected.

Believe it or not, there is a framework, a set of practical steps you can take to make your town more Idea Friendly.

It is possible to change attitudes, draw a crowd of supporters, improve the environment and create more connections, no matter what the pessimists say or do.

It all adds up to creating the kind of town you want to live in. Research has shown that being open to new ideas is tied to our economic future.

So, how can we open up our towns to new ideas?

In our latest Save Your Town webinar later this month, Deb and I will share the Idea Friendly framework and provide real-world examples of small town people already putting it into action.

Here at The Hub we are constantly looking for ways to reinvent and improve our work, to keep it fresh and relevant, and to break new ground.

Organizations that become complacent quickly lose their purpose and their value, and we know there is so much critical work to do in West Virginia right now that complacency just has no place.

So, this year, we’re mixing things up a little.

We are ready to think outside the box, to create a Hubapalooza that breaks the mould.

We think Hubapalooza, our regular gathering of community development folks, needs a little shake up. So, in 2017, we’re taking Hubapalooza back into the garage. We’re going to get under the hood, break this machine down, and see what new and improved beast we can rebuild in its place.

No doubt, Hubapalooza is always a blast, and no sooner do we pack it up for the year than folks are asking us “when’s the next one?” We know that Hubapalooza is fun, relevant and useful.

But as we sat down to build this year’s Hubapalooza, we noticed ourselves falling back into familiar patterns – some of the same invitees, perhaps the same venue, the same timing, the same approaches. There was too much “same” and not enough innovation, and that was a huge red flag for us.

Maybe it’s a traveling caravan of refitted school buses accompanied by a moving festival of food trucks?

So, rather than put on another Hubapalooza for the sake of it, we want to spend a moment to reinvent what Hubapalooza could be; why, where and for whom.

Maybe we should have smaller gatherings in various places across the state? Maybe it’s completely online and in the digital cloud? Maybe it’s a traveling caravan of refitted school buses accompanied by a moving festival of food trucks? (Not really. But that would be awesome.)

Point is, we are ready to think outside the box, to create a Hubapalooza that breaks the mould. Most importantly, we want Hubapalooza to be fun, fresh, and to bring value and inspiration to you.

A lot of people are excited about the first ever Active Week WV, me included!

To be held April 23 through 29, Active Week WV is a week in which businesses, organizations, schools, communities and other groups across the state will host events and activities that promote physical activity.

Learn all about Active Week WV, and find an event near you, at activeweekwv.com.

To bring together everyone in the state interested in physical activity to organize and promote fun things to do.

To connect all of those people to each other, to share ideas, and to see what others are doing.

Because our goal is to have as many events planned during this week as possible, I’ve wrangled up some resources for those who haven’t had much experience planning their own events.

Go and check out activeweekwv.com, find an event near you, share the website with your friends, and think of ways you can get involved.

Purposefully, Active Week WV coincides with Action for Healthy Kids’ Every Kid Healthy Week. For schools that are interested in hosting an activity during this week, I encourage you to see what resources you can pull from Action for Healthy Kids.

The month of April also happens to be the American Heart Associations National Walking Month Celebration. Check out their Move More in April toolkit.

For a different kind of “be active” opportunity, how about the West Virginia Adopt-A-Highway Statewide Spring Clean Up on April 29? Groups that would like to organize and host a clean up in their own community should call 1-800-322-5530 by April 15 to register your group.

If you know of any other resources that might be useful for folks looking to host their own physical activity event, please let me know. I’d love to share them.

So, go and check out activeweekwv.com, find an event near you, share the website with your friends, and think of ways you can get involved.

Here’s a great opportunity to connect to the resurgence of interest in local food and agriculture that’s bubbling up in West Virginia right now.

Sprouting Farms is a nonprofit farm training center located in Summers County, which helps provide farmers with solid business management and production skills, mentorship, land and resources necessary to launch, experiment, and refine their farm businesses.

Maximizing the use of Federal and State Tools for Economic DevelopmentThursday, March 23
10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m

Take advantage of assistance readily available to you, while also learning how to influence and shape projects in your region.

You’ll hear how to partner with regional, state and federal authorities to accomplish your goals. This webinar will show you how to use available technical assistance that can help you advance your objectives.

Speakers include:

Christine Butterfield – Senior Management Advisor

David Myers, CEcD – Executive Director of the Ponca City Development Authority

When it comes to digital media, new forms of journalism, and ways to talk and listen to your audience, the world is changing. And fast.

I, for one, am eager to do whatever I can to keep learning, and keep up to date. What’s the alternative?

And so The Hub is pleased to be a sponsor of a free public workshop at West Virginia University next month on “Using Audience Engagement to Report on Social Justice Issues.”

Featuring professionals from newsroom across the country, including ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, NowThis and NPR, the workshop, on Friday, April 28 from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m, takes participants behind the scenes of an innovative reporting project to highlight new techniques for community engagement, audience development and data sourcing for in-depth reporting projects.

Industry leaders will walk guests through how they utilize different audience engagement and social media strategies every day to reach consumers of their content.

The workshop will share the results of a collaborative reporting project between Morgan State University in Baltimore Maryland, and West Virginia University investigating food access and food security in their communities. Here’s where you can learn more, and register.

The industry leaders presenting at the workshop will walk guests through how they utilize different audience engagement and social media strategies every day to reach consumers of their content. Experts will also share strategies for using data resources, data visualization, community-based resources for covering food insecurity, as well as insights for effective community engagement in social justice reporting.

Through interactive conversations and hands-on experiences, you will have the opportunity to dig deeper into some of the tough questions facing the media industry as it covers sensitive social justice topics.

I think we all know who the Old Guard are. Those people who are holding onto old ideas from 30 or more years ago, and also holding onto power, sometimes fiercely.

They care about the community, or they used to, but they are hampered by their outdated view of the world, their community, the problems and actions. They think they are helping the community when they oppose your “unreasonable” ideas.

The New Old Guard tend to use jargon, talk about “building entrepreneurial ecosystems.” They think in terms of organizations, formality and committees, even to the point of ignoring individual action.

But who are the New Old Guard?

They care about the community, too. They are hampered by being part of an organizational structure that is, itself, outdated.

They are working inside a university, economic development nonprofit, business, extension or some other organization, and so they see solutions as being made up of organizations. They see organizational effort as the default action.

They tend to use jargon, talk about “building entrepreneurial ecosystems.” They think in terms of organizations, formality and committees, even to the point of ignoring individual action.

You might very well be part of that world. The majority of all the people reading this along with you are part of it. I used to be.

It’s not an automatic negative, but it’s not where the center of power rests today.

Building the new deck, Grafton. Photo by All Aboard Grafton

I used to do a talk on building entrepreneurial ecosystems. I had a slide that listed off potential community partners: Extension, library, chamber of commerce, economic development, Main Street, tribal government, local or county government, college, news media and other local organizations…

It was all about organizations and formal groups.

The future of your town is determined by the everyday actions of individuals.

Now I talk about becoming Idea Friendly, about people shaping the future of their community. I have slides that talk people as potential partners: Artists, hobbyists, part time business owners, educators, and so on…

Today, I’m focusing on people because that is where you’ll find the center of power now and in the future.

The time is past when a few people could gather in a room and decide the future of your town. The future of your town is determined by the everyday actions of individuals based on what they believe about the future of your town and their role in it. (That’s adapted from a similar quote from Carol Colletta of the Kresge Foundation.)

Remember this: The Old Guard cares about the community. The New Guard cares about the community. The People care about the community.

Us vs. Them is a myth. There is no them; there is only us.

Us vs. Them is a myth. There is no them; there is only us.

We all have different approaches that can make it tough to work together, but we all share common goals. We don’t agree on what to do, we may not agree on short term actions, but we all start from caring about where we are going.

It’s not about converting anyone to your worldview. It’s about helping people see how they and their approach have an important role in the new world and the future. They can still be helpful and valuable, without falling into patterns that obstruct.

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